More than half of America’s waterbodies are unsafe for swimming, fishing, and as sour ces of drinking due to city building and farming. Beyond water quality problems, dysfunctional streams cause flooding and erosion of property leading to neighborhood blight. Not only can this be reversed, but repair of degraded urban streams can be a powerful agent for reinventing the physical environments of post-industrial cities. This requires transdisciplinary collaboration between the fields of ecological engineering and urban design. The American city was uniquely premised on fusions of landscape and urbanism—a tradition with plenty of room for innovation.

However, watershed plans remain data and policy driven documents with a singular interest in repairing waterbodies, with little to say about city and urban design. Conversely, urban planning has not codified the value of healthy ecosystems within which cities are built. In this Anthropoceneage, when ecosystems are human-dominated, resilient urban design must account for biological processes. The Framework Plan introduces watershed management into urban design with one simple demand: that every new development contribute to watershed stewardship, where infrastructure and building deliver ecological services in addition to urban services. The Framework Plan formulates a planning vocabulary for use among professionals and decision makers to engage this new design market.

UACDC advances creative development in Arkansas through design, research, and education solutions. Originated in 1995 as an outreach center of the Fay Jones School of Architecture + Design, the center has its own downtown facilities and a full-time design and planning staff who deliver professional services for communities and organizations nationwide. Much like a teaching hospital, some staff also deliver educational services as practicing design professors. UACDC regularly collaborates with allied professionals in multiple disciplines, and the center’s nonprofit status allows it to leverage the work of its private sector collaborators.

Under the direction of Stephen Luoni, the center’s director and Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies, UACDC has become a respected national authority in urban design and the shaping of the built environment. Focused on public-interest design, UACDC has developed eight place-making models to address core challenges in our built environment. These models in community development include, among others, transit-oriented development, low impact development, context-sensitive street design, agricultural urbanism, and smart growth urbanism. UACDC has helped to reshape development and planning policy at the state, regional, and municipal levels.